"The Housebreaker of Shady Hill" and Nakedness: Cheever's Puritanism and the Pastoral

By John Dyer

"The Housebreaker of Shady Hill," from which John Cheever's 1958 collection of stories derives its name, is the best example of the author's use of the Puritan conscience and the pastoral in his fiction. The primary image in the story is that of nakedness. Cheever introduces nudity in the opening scenes of the narrative and then plays with this trope in order to make statements about his characters' feelings of innocence and guilt.

The three points of our concern in this tale are the moments when Hake steals from the Warburtons, the guilt that results from this burglary, and the strange conclusion of the story.

Hake finds out about Carl Warburton's money when Mrs. Warburton mentions her husband's wallet. The Hakes and a number of other Shady Hill families are over at the Warburtons for dinner. It is late, and Carl has not yet returned from work:

...Sheila [Warburton] was worried. "Carl has to walk through a terrible slum to get to the station," she said, "and he carries thousands of dollars on him, and I'm so afraid he'll be victimized...." [author's italics](8)

Carl returns unscathed, and the night continues without interruption. The Hakes goes home, and Johnny goes to bed and sleeps, dreaming first of plastic wrap:I had been dreaming about wrapping bread in colored parablendeum Filmex. I had dreamed a full-page spread in a national magazine: BRING SOME COLOR INTO YOUR BREADBOX! The page was covered with jewel-toned loaves of bread--turquoise bread, ruby bread, and bread the colors of emeralds. (8)Then, of his mother, with whom he is estranged:

She sent me through college, arranged for me to spend my vacations in pleasant landscapes, and fired my ambitions, such as they are, but she bitterly opposed my marriage, and our relations had been strained ever since...I wanted to do it all over again in some emotional Arcadia, and have us both behave differently, so that I could think of her at three in the morning without guilt, and so that she would be spared loneliness and neglect in her old age. (9)

Then, finally, Hake has a coughing fit and must get out of bed. Standing in the bathroom, he is reminded of death: "I was suddenly convinced I was dying of bronchial cancer," and then he remembers his failing business:

I tossed my cigarettes into the toilet (ping) and straightened my back, but the pain in my chest was sharper, and I was convinced that the corruption had begun. I had friends who would think of me kindly, I knew, and Christina [his wife] and the children would surely keep alive an affectionate memory. But then I thought about money again, and the Warburtons, and my rubber checks at the clearing house... (10)

After this plot-line, which goes from plastics, to a nostalgic longing, to a fear of death, and finally to a fear of insolvency, Hake promptly gets dressed, sneaks into the Warburtons, and steals Carl's wallet. By analyzing the succession of thoughts leading up to this theft, we can see much of what lies behind the hopes and fears of one of Cheever's suburbanites.

But his theft clearly engenders the opposite of everything his suburban-pastoral dream represents. In stealing from his neighbors, he is victimizing them, bringing the corruption of the city into his suburb. Instead of recreating an Arcadia, a region of simple pleasures and delights, Hake's theft has drastically complicated his life. The drive for naked, unadulterated simplicity has ironically turned into an indulgence of shameless compulsion.

One would think that these many examples of Hake's conscience in the story would inspire him to somehow make amends for his crime. Eventually it is something outside of Hake that causes him to change, however. All through his travails, Hake continues to scope out his neighbor's houses, and one day he does actually attempt a second burglary. During this second attempt, before Hake enters the Pewters' house, it starts raining. Caught in the rain, Hake has a revelation:

I was not trapped. I was here on earth because I chose to be. And it was no skin off my elbow how I had been given the gifts of life so long as I possessed them, and I possessed them then--the tie between the wet grass roots and the hair that grew out of my body, the thrill of my mortality that I had known on summer nights...I looked up at the dark house and then turned and walked away. (29)

There was no sense in overdoing prudence, and I went around to the back of their house, found the kitchen door open, and put an envelope on the table in the dark room. As I was walking away from the house, a police car drew up beside me, and a patrolman I knew cranked down the window and asked, "What are you doing out at this time of night, Mr. Hake?"

"I'm walking the dog," I said cheerfully. There was no dog in sight, but they didn't look. "Here Toby! Here, Toby! Here Toby! Good dog!" I called, and off I went, whistling merrily in the dark. (30)

Hake's crisis of conscience appears rather superficial. After all, it was rather easily dispelled soon after he got his job back. In truth, Hake was operating under delusions from the very start, and his crisis of conscience brings him no closer to really understanding why he was ever prompted to steal. It was a delusion for Hake to think that stealing money would somehow solve his financial problems, a fact highlighted by the farrago of feelings concerning death, his mother, and the pastoral that occurred previous to his theft. And it is similarly a delusion to think that returning the money will really make life any better; Hake is a false convert. He ends the story exactly as he began it, talking to himself in the dark.